It matters that people have a way to use the latest findings in psychology beyond buying a pill for depression. It matters that people have a way of looking at their lives that lets them ask the big questions and determine how they want to live – and that this is supported by therapists and mental health professionals.

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Posts tagged with the category Key Concepts

Re-visioning Existential Psychology Beyond the Consulting Room

In Judaism, there is a concept of social action called Tikkun Olam—repairing or healing the world. There are millions of large and small ways to do Tikkun Olam—from working in soup kitchens to volunteering in African refugee zones to recycling your trash. Two of my first tutors in existential psychotherapy in England, Mary Sullivan and...

Brooks and Life's Existential Dimensions

David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times, may be the only major conservative media figure today covering the “evolutionary psychology” beat—along with the “neuropsychology” beat, and the occasional writings of biophysicists and theorists of mind.
His writing of the past few years has sought to expose the way...

Myth: The Mind-Body Connection

The word myth has various definitions and meanings. Henry Murray’s (1960) Myth and Mythmaking began with a definition that I particularly like from the work of Mark Schorer in “The Necessity of Myth” from his writings on William Blake:
Myths are the instruments by which we continually struggle to make our experience intelligible...

Existential Roundup

Welcome to the Existential Roundup, where we bring you links to some articles currently trending that may be of interest to those in the existential-humanistic psychology community.
Since some of you may be like me and may still be suffering the impact of changing the clocks to Daylight Savings Time—I really missed that extra hour of sleep...

Cheer Up!

I am a worried man. I worry mostly about things far outside of my own control—like climate change, racism, wealth inequality, the dismantling of our democracy. People get the impression I am an unhappy person. They try to cheer me up. Make a list of positive things in your life, they say, or listen to happy music, or hug your kid.
Really,...

The Peril is Not Mental Illness but the Polarized Mind: The Social Catastrophe That Gets Repeatedly Overlooked

There is a reason that many of the most twisted and destructive people on this planet are not seen as “mental patients.” They tend to be ordinary or even celebrated individuals—and their brains are as “normal” as the rest of us. Does this not tell us something glaring about the inadequacy of our current diagnostic...

Love and a Hockey Game

We were ten rows up from the ice, sitting almost directly behind the goalie. There were 18,000-plus people sitting around us screaming and yelling for the home team, but I was most focused on the young woman sitting next to me. I have known her since she was three; we have been part of the same family since she was ten. It has been a rough 30-plus...

Existential Roundup

Welcome to the Existential Roundup, where we bring you links to some articles currently trending that may be of interest to those in the existential-humanistic psychology community.
The limitations of our existence are, of course, our human birth and death, but sometimes we pay less attention to the Dasein of childhood than we do to that of...

Dostoyevsky Out Of Context

Kazimir Malevich was punished by Stalin’s regime for creating bourgeois art. Stalin expected that all art reflect Communist beliefs: it was expected to be realist and populist. Malevich’s cubist works attempted to reduce scenes to their most basic visual elements, culminating in the infamous “black square.”
His works were...

Work-Life Balance, Authenticity, and Existential Values

I deeply believe that one of our greatest crises in the United States, as well as much of the world, is our inability to achieve work-life balance. Although “crisis” may sound dramatic, I believe there is a case for it. The psychological and physical health costs are quite significant, despite the difficulty in calculating them. These...

Love It or Leave It

Why don't presidents fight the wars?
Why do they always send the poor?
Why do they always send the poor?
Why do they always send the poor?
- System of a Down
We can all identify a few times, a few events in our lives, that have changed us. That have awakened us, startled our awareness, opened us to a view of things that was previously...

British Invasion of Memory

Whether you remember or anticipate, you do it now. The past is no more. The future is not yet. --Fritz Perls
Watching the remaining living Beatles reunite a few weeks ago to celebrate and remember the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964—the moment that marked the beginning of the...

Mortality

Death is the great certainty of life -- and a subject we almost never talk about. How we live in its shadow, and the choices we make about the best way to live a life where time is the only non-renewable resource, is a key element of existential thought.